A Saturday Night Visit with Dr. Christensen

Saturday was certainly exciting. It didn't start out that way. It wasn't planned that way. But as the day rolled on it just gathered steam.

We started out kind of slow. Chaos was having a party that afternoon. She had invited 6 or 7 friends over for a "Schools Out For Summer" party. Things got going around 1 PM with a backyard full of middle school girls splashing, giggling, sliding, giggling, laughing, giggling, running, giggling, eating and giggling. Did I mention that they seem to giggle a lot? Well this went on most of the afternoon, ending with pizza and giggling for dinner.

The girls all seemed to have fun. At least that's what they told their parents while we were listening. So if they didn't at least they were kind enough to hide it from us.

So my dear wife and I have cleaned up around the house and are just sitting down to relax for the evening. It's about 7 PM and the kids are outside riding their bikes. Suddenly Chaos comes running into the house with her hand over her mouth and a shocked/pained/worried/scared expression on her face. Yes - each quadrant of her face was showing a different expression.

My dear wife and I give each other that "Oh what now look" and turn to see what is wrong. With her hand in front of her mouth Chaos blurts out "I broke my tooth on Destruction's handlebars."

Well I'm opening my mouth to ask "Why were you trying to eat Destruction's handlebars?", when she drops her hand and we see that one of her upper front teeth is half gone. The tooth just ended, in a nice neat straight line right across the face of the tooth. Only problem is it's now only half as long as the one next to it.

My dear wife and both leap to our feet, She rushes forward to comfort her baby, I manage to swallow my smart-ass question and instead ask, do you have the missing piece.

Chaos opens her other hand to show us a pretty good chunk of tooth lying there.

So while my dear wife comforts our oldest child I pace back and forth for a few seconds assessing alternatives. It's 7:15 PM on a Saturday. None of the dental offices in town are going to be open. The emergency room at the hospital is not an option; they don't have a dentist on staff. So quickly several other options run through my brain: Band-Aid - probably won't stick, Tourniquet - around what? besides she isn't bleeding, liquor - well at least none for the kid, spackle - maybe, oh, better scratch that also, five- minute epoxy - nope, I ran out of that, duct tape - might look funny, superglue - probably not going to get away with that while my dear wife is watching. So, finally running out of reasonable ideas, I get desperate and try something silly.

I grab the phone book and the phone and call a member of our church who is also a Dentist. I apologized for bothering him at home, but I was stumped for ideas. I explained the emergency and asked what I should do? Secretly I was hoping he would ask if I had any superglue around, but figured with my luck he would recommend five-minute epoxy instead.

Well this man, bless his plaque scratching, tooth mending heart, recommends that we meet him at his office in 35 minutes.

So Chaos had about 20 minutes of loving and comfort from Mom then we headed over to Dentist's office. He gets Chaos settled into the chair and does some dentist stuff. Finally he decided that he could just bond the broken piece back into place. So he did. Yep, I was right, it was five-minute epoxy and not superglue. It was pretty fascinating to watch. Since he didn't have a dental assistant I got to sit in her chair and watch. Seeing what goes on in your mouth looks a lot different from straight on, than it does looking at the reflection of what the dentist is doing in his glasses.

Well Chaos wasn't as interested in the whole process as I was. She was pretty scared. But once she realized that the Novocain injection wasn't going to hurt any worse than it did, and once she got numb she was OK. Well at least until I asked her if she wanted her tooth replaced with a silver or gold one.

So we got her fixed up and back into her mommy's loving arms. Dr. Christensen went far and above what I hoped for when I called him. I went looking for some suggestions and got a solution to my problem. Thank you, Dr. Dale.

So if you are ever in Ridgecrest and decide to bite a bicycle handlebar at 7:00 PM on a Saturday I know a guy who can fix you up. Oh, he's also a pretty good dentist during regular work hours also, and he'd much rather see you then.

Now all we have to do is figure out how Chaos and Destruction managed to get his handlebar slamming into her mouth while they were each riding their own bikes.

I figure it must have really been an accident and not one of them doing something that they weren't supposed to do, because Noise hasn't tried to tattle on either one of them yet.